Yeats, Jack Butler (1871-1957). The best-
known Irish painter of the 20th century, born
in London, the son of John Butler Yeats
( 1839-1922), a barrister who became an unremarkable but successful portrait painter, and
brother of the celebrated poet William Butler
Yeats. He had an idyllic childhood in Sligo, his
ancestral home on the north-west coast of Ireland, and studied at various art schools in London, notably Westminster School of Art
under Fred *Brown. From 1910 he lived in Dublin. Early in his career he worked mainly
as an illustrator; he did his first oil paintings
in about 1897 (the year of his first one-man
exhibition in London), but he did not work
regularly in the medium until about 1905.
The subjects he painted included Celtic myth
and everyday Irish life (including scenes of
fairs and horse races), and through these he
contributed to the upsurge of nationalist feeling in the arts that accompanied the movement for Irish independence. His early work
as a painter was influenced by the French
*Impressionist pictures he saw in the collection of Hugh *Lane, but in the 1920s he developed a more personal *Expressionist style
characterized by high-keyed colour and
extremely loose brushwork (there is some
similarity to the work of * Kokoshka, who
became a great friend in the last decade of Yeats's life). Yeats has many admirers, but
some critics think that his late paintings
often degenerate into a muddy mess. He was
immensely prolific, producing more than
1,000 paintings and a great many drawings.
His work is represented in numerous galleries
in Ireland, notably the National Gallery and
the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern art in Dublin and the Sligo County Museum and Art
Gallery, which has material relating also to
his father and brother. There are also numerous examples in the USA, where he has long
been popular. Yeats was a writer as well as a
painter--the author of several plays, novels,
and volumes of poetry, as well as Life in the West
of Ireland ( 1912) and Sligo ( 1930).

Yoshihara, Jiro (1905-72). Japanese painter
and entrepreneur, born in Osaka. He was a
wealthy industrialist and was mainly self-
taught as an artist. During the 1930s he was a
pioneer of abstract art in Japan, but he is best
known as the central figure of the * Gutai
Group, which he founded in 1954 and sustained with his wealth for the rest of his life.
In 1957 Yoshihara was awarded first prize at
the Tokyo *Biennale. His paintings of this
time are 'a sophisticated mixture of Eastern
and Western modes. They mingle Zen, and
Zen versions of traditional oriental calligraphy, with things learned from American *Abstract Expressionism'. ( Edward *Lucie- Smith
, Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, 1996).

Young British Artists (YBAs). An imprecise
term applied to a number of highly publicized British avant-garde artists active from
the late 1980s, several of whom are well
known for their grubbily glamorous lifestyles
as well as for what they create; they do not
form an organized group and their work is
diverse, but there are ties of friendship linking many of them and they have been supported chiefly by Charles *Saatchi. These
artists are sometimes also referred to as the
'Freeze' generation, in reference to the exhibition organized by Damien *Hirst in 1988 that
first brought them media attention. Subsequently there have been several other exhibitions featuring their work, most notably
'Sensation' (see AVANT-GARDE) at the Royal
Academy, London, in 1997. In a supplement
on this exhibition published in the magazine

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